1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an automatic program forming apparatus for the automatic measurement of a contour, by which a three-dimensional measurement used for the evaluation and identification of a product is conducted.
2. DESCRIPTION OF THE RELATED ART
A computer numerical control (CNC) three-dimensional measurement device has been used for contour measurement, that is, for measuring a sectional contour as a train of dots to thereby observe the finished state of the curved surface form of a measurement object. In the conventional measurement, dot train data are taken in under an individually designated measurement condition by moving a probe of the CNC three-dimensional measurement device along the contour by manual inputting.
However, the measuring operation in the conventional manual measurement is not efficient, because an operator must always monitor the three-dimensional measurement device. Further, a large time is required for the measurement. There arises a problem in that accurate measurement based on a large amount of measurement data cannot be made.